Wide Open Spaces

Failure. Huge, gaping, epic failure. So you thought you wanted to be a social worker? So you were brazen enough to think that you, you of the mega-issues, would be capable of helping anyone with their issues when you haven't even begun to help yourself with yours.

Well, yes, actually I did.

And there is where the feelings of fantastic failure come in.

Who doesn't know what I'm talking about
Who's never left home, who's never struck out
To find a dream and a life of their own
A place in the clouds, a foundation of stone

I left my job for the last time on Tuesday. Taking with me boxes filled with my social work books and tears, tears for what I accomplished, what I didn't, and tears for what I wanted to.

Many precede and many will follow
A young girl's dream no longer hollow
It takes the shape of a place out west
But what it holds for her, she hasn't yet guessed

Sure, there were moments when I reached a client, where for a brief moment I made a difference and I made peace with the fact that the work I was doing was for the most part thankless (I think a prerequisite of any social work job) and there would probably NOT be any Blindside movie in my future (but if there is I want Natalie Portman to play me) and I was almost okay with that. What we do as social workers in not academy award making movies, but rather brief shooting stars. But it wasn't enough for me to not make me feel as if I totally sucked at my job. and in looking back, I cannot adequately articulate what would have made everything okay. All I know is I didn't feel good at my job, I didn't feel valued or respected and I was tired of being looked at as "that bleeding heart therapist who is too soft on the kids." At lunch on my last day somebody said "you just weren't a good fit." To me, that is failure. Pure and simple.

As I'm going through the biggest falling-flat-on-my-face moment I am also doing a yoga practice, and received an email that talked about how loss is about creating space. Without my job a wide open space has been created for me. Space to do what with -I'm not exactly sure yet. Space to hang with my kids, space to do yoga, space to run, space to write, space to grow. I'm grateful that I am lucky enough to be able to have this opportunity to create this space. I know how lucky I am and I am truly grateful, but, at the risk of sounding ungrateful, it is scary. Scary because I feel as if I have been given a sacred gift in this space and I don't want to squander it.

She traveled this road as a child
Wide eyed and grinning, she never tired
But now she won't be coming back with the rest
If these are life's lessons, she'll take this test

I am grateful for all of the gifts of the universe
I am open to all the gifts of the universe.
I am open to Wide Open Spaces.

She needs wide open spaces
Room to make her big mistakes
She needs new faces
She knows the high stakes